He hoped the vic was dead. For his sake…

“Is she alive?” Rhyme repeated.

“No,” Sachs whispered. “I don’t see how… No.”

“Is the room secure?”

Sachs glanced at the officer, who’d heard the transmission and nodded.

“Scene secure.”

Rhyme told her, “I want the ESU trooper out then you and the medic go check on her.”

Sachs gagged once on the smell and forced herself to control the reflex. She and the medic walked in an oblique path to the pipe. He bent unemotionally forward and felt the woman’s neck. He shook his head.

“Amelia?” Rhyme asked.

Her second body in the line of duty. Both in one day.

The medic said, “DCDS.”

Sachs nodded, said formally into the mike, “We have a deceased, confirmed dead at the scene.”

“Scalded to death?” Rhyme asked.

“Looks like it.”

“Tied to the wall?”

“A pipe. Handcuffed, hands behind. Feet tied with clothesline. Duct-tape gag. He opened the steam pipe. She was only a couple of feet from it. God.”

Rhyme continued, “Back the medic out the way you came. To the door. Watch where you put your feet.”

She did this, staring at the body. How could the skin be so red? Like a boiled crab shell.

“All right, Amelia. You’re going to work the scene. Open the suitcase.”

She said nothing. Kept staring.

“Amelia, are you at the door?… Amelia?”

“What?” she shouted.

“Are you at the door?”

His voice was so fucking calm. So different from the snide, demanding voice of the man she remembered in the bedroom. Calm… and something else. She didn’t know what.

“Yes, I’m at the door. You know, this is crazy.”

“Utterly insane,” Rhyme agreed, almost cheerfully. “Is the suitcase open?”

She flipped up the lid and glanced inside. Pliers and forceps, a flex mirror on a handle, cotton balls, eyedroppers, pinking sheers, pipettes, spatulas, scalpels…

What is all this?

… a Dustbuster, cheesecloth, envelopes, sifting screens, brushes, scissors, plastic and paper bags, metal cans, bottles – 5 percent nitric acid, ninhydrin, silicone, iodide, friction-ridge-printing supplies.

Impossible. Into the mike she said, “I don’t think you believed me, detective. I really don’t know anything about CS work.”

Eyes on the woman’s ruined body. Water dripped off her peeled nose. A bit of white – bone – showed through the cheek. And her face was drawn into an anguished grin. Just like the vic that morning.

“I believed you, Amelia,” he said dismissively. “Now, the case is open?” He was calm and he sounded… what? Yes, that was the tone. Seductive. He sounds like a lover.

I hate him, she thought. It’s wrong to hate a cripple. But I fucking hate him.

“You’re in the basement, right?”

“Yessir.”

“Listen, you’ve got to call me Lincoln. We’re going to know each other very well by the time this is over.”

Which is gonna be about sixty minutes, tops.

“You’ll find some rubber bands in the suitcase, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I see some.”

“Put them around your shoes. Where the ball of your foot is. If there’s any confusion as to footprints you’ll know which ones are yours.”

“Okay, done.”

“Take some evidence bags and envelopes. Put a dozen of each in your pocket. Can you use chopsticks?”

“What did you say?”

“You live in the city, right? You ever go to Mott Street? For General Tsao’s chicken? Cold noodles with sesame paste?”

Her gorge rose at the talk of food. She refused to glance at the woman dangling in front of her.

“I can use chopsticks,” she said icily.

“Look in the suitcase. I’m not sure you’ll find them. They kept them there when I was running scenes.”

“I don’t see any.”

“Well, you’ll find some pencils. Put those in your pocket. Now you’re going to walk a grid. Cover every inch. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“First tell me what you see.”

“One big room. Maybe twenty by thirty. Full of rusted pipes. Cracked concrete floor. Walls’re brick. Mold.”

“Any boxes? Anything on the floor?”

“No, it’s empty. Except for the pipes, oil tanks, the boiler. There’s the sand – the shells, a pile of it spilling out of a crack in the wall. And there’s some gray stuff too -”

“'Stuff'?” he jumped. “I don’t recognize that word. What’s 'stuff'?”

A burst of anger tore through her. She calmed and said, “It’s the asbestos but not wadded up like this morning. It’s in crumbling sheets.”

“Good. Now, the first sweep. You’re looking for footprints and any staged clues that he’s left for us.”

“You think he left more?”

“Oh, I’ll betcha,” Rhyme said. “Put on the goggles and use the PoliLight. Keep it low. Grid the room. Every inch. Get going. You know how to walk a grid?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She bristled. “I don’t need to be tested.”

“Ah, humor me. How?”

“Back and forth in one direction, then back and forth in the perpendicular direction.”

“Each step, no more than one foot in length.”

She hadn’t known that. “I know,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

The PoliLight flashed on with an eerie, otherworldly glow. She knew it was something called an ALS – alternative light source – and that it made fingerprints and semen and blood and some shoeprints fluoresce. The brilliant bile-green light made shadows dance and jump and more than once she nearly drew down on a dark form that turned out to be a mere phantom of darkness.

“Amelia?” Rhyme’s voice was sharp. She jumped again.

“Yes? What?”

“Do you see any footprints?”

She continued to stare at the floor. “I, uh, no. I see streaks in the dust. Or something.” She cringed at the careless word. But Rhyme, unlike Peretti that morning, paid no attention. He said, “So. He swept up afterwards.”

She was surprised. “Yeah, that’s it! Broom marks. How’d you know?”

Rhyme laughed – a jarring sound to Sachs in this rank tomb – and he said, “He was smart enough to cover his tracks this morning; no reason to stop now. Oh, he’s good, this boy is. But we’re good too. Keep going.”

Sachs bent over, her joints on fire, and began the search. She covered every square foot of the floor. “Nothing here. Nothing at all.”

He picked up on the note of finality in her voice. “You’ve only just started, Amelia. Crime scenes are three-dimensional. Remember that. What you mean is there’s nothing on the floor. Now search the walls. Start with the spot farthest away from the steam and cover every inch.”

She slowly circled the horrible marionette in the center of the room. She thought of a Maypole game she’d played at some Brooklyn street feast when she was six or seven, as her father proudly took home movies. Circling slowly. It was an empty room and yet there were a thousand different places to search.

Hopeless… Impossible.

But it wasn’t. On a ledge, about six feet above the floor, she found the next set of clues. She barked a fast laugh. “Got something here.”

“In a cluster?”

“Yes. A big splinter of dark wood.”

“Chopsticks.”

“What?” she asked.

“The pencils. Use them to pick it up. Is it wet?”

“Everything in here’s wet.”

“Sure, it would be. The steam. Put it in a paper evidence bag. Plastic keeps the moisture in and in this heat bacteria’ll destroy the trace evidence. What else is there?” he asked eagerly.

“It’s, I don’t know, hairs, I think. Short, trimmed. A little pile of them.”

“Loose or attached to skin?”

“Loose.”

“There’s a role of two-inch tape in the suitcase. 3M. Pick them up with that.”

Sachs lifted most of the hairs, placed them in a paper envelope. She studied the ledge around the hairs. “I see some stains. Looks like rust or blood.” She thought to hit the spot with the PoliLight. “They’re fluorescing.”

“Can you do a presumptive blood test?”

“No.”

“Let’s just assume it’s blood. Could it be the victim’s?”